William Temple Hornaday

“ A point to which we ask special attention from beginning to end is, that in endeavoring to estimate the mental capacity of the elephant, we shall base no arguments upon any particularly intelligent individual of a given race or species, as is always done in discussions of intelligence in the dog, the cat, the horse, parrot, and ape. On the contrary, it is the intention to reveal the mental capacity of every elephant living, tame or wild, of both the Indian and African species, except a few individuals with diseased minds. ”

“ There takes place in the keddah, or pen of capture, a mighty struggle between the giant strength of the captive and the ingenuity of man, ably seconded by a few powerful tame elephants. When he finds his strength utterly overcome by man's intelligence, he yields to the inevitable, and accepts the situation philosophically. Sanderson once had a narrow escape from death while on the back of a tame elephant inside a keddah attempting to secure a wild female. She fought his elephant long and viciously, with the strength and courage of despair, but she was finally overcome by superior numbers. ”

“ While it is generally fruitless and unsatisfactory to enter the field of speculation, I can not resist the temptation to assert my belief that an elephant can be taught to read written characters, and also to express some of his own thoughts or states of feeling in writing. It would be a perfectly simple matter to prepare suitable appliances by which the sagacious animal could hold a crayon in his trunk, and mark upon a surface adapted to his convenience. ”

“ But the circumstances in the case are wholly to the advantage of the dog, and against the elephant. While the former roams at will through his master's house and out-door premises, through town and country, mingling freely with all kinds of men and domestic animals, with unlimited time and liberty to lay plans and execute them, the elephant in captivity is chained to a stake, with no liberty of action whatever, aside from eating and drinking, and amusing himself by swaying his body, swinging one foot, or switching his tail. ”

“ In India the elephant bears a spotless reputation for patience, amiability, and obedience, except in the case of such individuals as have been afflicted with insanity, either temporary or permanent. I know of no instances on record wherein an elephant has been guilty of culpable homicide, or even of attempting it. I have never heard of an elephant in India so much as kicking, striking, or otherwise injuring either human beings or other domestic animals. ”

“ I am convinced that an elephant could by ill-treatment be driven to insanity, and I have no doubt this has been done more than once in this country.
When commanded by man, the elephant will tear a criminal limb from limb, or crush him to death with his knees, or go out to battle holding a cimeter in his trunk. He will, when told to do so, attack his kind with fury and persistence ”

“ In endeavoring to determine the mental status of the dog, horse, cat, ape, or elephant, or even human beings, the average intelligence of all the members of an entire species, or at least an entire race, should be the objective point of the inquiry.
Under the head of intellectual qualities we have first to consider the elephant's
Powers of Independent Observation and Reasoning, or Reasoning from Cause to Effect. ”

“ In the mind of the elephant, e.g., each elephant, there was no confusion of ideas, but, on the contrary, a mental grasp on the whole subject, so secure and courprehensive that the animal felt himself master of the situation.
I have never yet seen a performance of trained dogs which could be considered worthy of serious comparison with the accomplishments of either performing or working elephants. In the matter of educational capacity the dog can not on any grounds be considered the rival of the elephant. ”

“ The extreme difficulty in teaching a dog of mature age even the simplest thing is so well known that it has passed into a proverb: "It is hard to teach an old dog new tricks." In other words, the conditions must be favorable. What is the case with the elephant? The question shall be answered by Sanderson. In his "Wild Beasts of India," he says: "Nor are there any elephants which can not be easily subjugated, whatever their size or age. The largest and oldest elephants are frequently the most easily tamed, as they are less apprehensive than the younger ones." ”

“ The system and judgment and patient effort which developed an active, educated, and even refined intellect in Laura Bridgman—deaf, dumb, and blind from birth—ought certainly to be able to teach a clear-headed, intelligent elephant to express at least some of his thoughts in writing. In this way it may, some day, be possible to open a channel for the communication of thought between man and the lower animals; in this way it may be possible to prove, beyond all possibility of dispute, the presence of the true reasoning faculty in other animals than man. ”

“ All who have witnessed the tying of captives, one by one, in a keddah, wherein a whole wild herd have been entrapped, testify to the human-like quality of intelligence displayed by all the tame elephants who assist in the tying and leading out and subjugation of the captives. They enter into the business with both spirit and understanding, and as occasion requires will deceitfully cajole or vigorously punish a troublesome captive. ”

“ In this country, however, where he is at the mercy of quick-tempered and sometimes brutal showmen, who very often do not understand the temperament of the animals under their control, and who during the traveling season are rendered perpetually ill-tempered and vindictive by reason of overwork and insufficient sleep—with such masters as these to mete out punishment, without judgment or reason, it is no wonder that the animal occasionally rebels, and executes vengeance. ”

“ Unlike the inhabitants of Hindostan, Ceylon, Burmah, and Siam, who from time immemorial have made a business of the capture and training of wild elephants, the negroes of Africa look upon the elephant only as an ivory-producer. The splendid tusks of Africanus make his total extermination only a question of time. ”

“ Every working elephant in India is supposed to possess the intelligence necessary to the performance of any of the acts enumerated above at the command of his driver, either by spoken words, a pressure of the knees or feet, or a touch with the driving goad. ”

“ In strong contrast with the stealthy and noiseless manner in which elephants steal away from a lurking danger or ambush discovered, from an open attack, accompanied with the noise of fire-arms, they rush away at headlong speed, quite regardless of the noise they make. On one occasion a herd which I was designing to attack, and had approached to within forty yards on one side, as they were feeding in some thick bushes, discovered my presence and retreated so silently that they had been gone five minutes before I discovered what their sudden quietude really meant. ”

“ The Indian elephant's reputation for mental superiority over the African is apparently due to accidental circumstances. It is true that trained elephants of the former species outnumber the African by perhaps more than sixty to one, but it is also true that in Africa the inhabitants are mostly negro savages who have neither the resources, intelligence, nor inclination necessary to the wholesale capture and domestication of elephants. ”

“ For many generations the horse has been bred for strength, for speed, or for beauty of form, but the breeding of the dog has been based chiefly on his intelligence. With all his advantages, his comprehensive faculties, even in the most exceptional individuals of a whole race, are not to be compared to those of any adult elephant fresh from the jungle. ”

“ Long before the world will have reached the necessity of utilizing this animal as a beast of burden, the ivory hunters will have finished their war of extermination, now being waged with such alarming success, and the chances are that the zoologist of the future will describe this animal as so entirely inferior to the Indian species, both in intelligence and temper, that only a few individuals were ever successfully trained. ”

“ The reasoning faculty is, to the popular mind, the gulf which separates him from the so-called dumb brutes, wide, fathomless, and impassable. While there are many who believe that this gulf which separates reason from absence of reason is occasionally bridged over, as it were, in the case of individual animals of phenomenal intelligence, there are a few who deny its existence altogether. ”

“ The most sensible carriage-horse is liable to step on his master's foot or crowd him against a wall in a moment of excitement; but even inside the keddah, with wild elephants all about, and a captive elephant hemmed in by two, three, or four tame ones, the noosers actually work under the bodies and between the feet of the tame animals until the feet of the captive are tied. ”

“ It is safe to say that, thus far, not one half the elephant's mental capabilities have been developed or even understood. It would be of great interest to determine by experiment the full educational capacity of this interesting quadruped, and, but for the lack of a permanent menagerie in this city, it would ere now have been undertaken. It would be equally interesting to determine the exact limit of its reasoning powers in applied mechanics. An animal that can turn a hand-organ with regularity at the proper speed, can be taught to push a smoothing-plane invented purposely for him ”

“ Such a ponderous beast can not be allowed to roam at large among human beings, and he never leaves his stake and chain except under the guidance of his mahout, who directs his every act. There is no telling what wonderful powers of reasoning captive elephants might develop if they could only enjoy the freedom accorded all dogs, except the blood-hound, bull-dog, and a few others. ”

“ In this instance, also, the alarm was communicated by silent signals, or sign-language. Tame elephants are never known to tread on the feet of their attendants or knock them down by accident; or, at least, no instances of the kind have ever come to my knowledge. The elephant's feet are very large, his range of vision is very circumscribed, and his extreme and wholly voluntary solicitude for the safety of his human attendants can not be due to anything else than independent reasoning. The most intelligent dog is apt to greet his master by planting a pair of dirty paws on his coat or trousers. ”

“ The alleged mental superiority of the dog is based almost wholly upon his powers of independent reasoning and observation as exhibited in a state of almost perfect freedom. Until the educated elephant, who has grown to maturity under man's influence, is allowed the dog's freedom to plan and execute, no comparison can be made between them in this respect. ”

“ The entire herd formed in single file before proceeding a quarter of a mile, and continued strictly in that order, one directly behind another, for several miles. Like the human dwellers in the jungle, the elephants know that the easiest and most expeditious way for a large body of animals to traverse a tangled forest is for the leader to pick the way, while all the rest follow in his footsteps. ”

“ The dog has furnished a far greater number of such instances than any other animal, but we believe that this is due not so much to his superior intelligence as to the fact that he is brought into closer relations with his master, man, than is any other animal. A great many stories are told of the horse, cat, and elephant, and a few others detailing the performances of three or four remarkably intelligent chimpanzees and orangs have been repeated until they are now worn threadbare. ”

“ ACCORDING to the popular idea, man is the only animal endowed with reason. Even after modern scientific classification forced from all the humiliating admission that man is an animal, the idea of his supreme superiority over all the rest of the animal kingdom was embalmed in the formula, "Man is a reasoning being." ”

“ Sir Emerson Tennent records an instance wherein an elephant fed from the hand on the first night of its capture, and in a very few days evinced pleasure at being patted on the head. Such instances as the above can be multiplied indefinitely. To what else shall they be attributed than philosophic reasoning on the part of the elephant? The orang-outang, so often put forward as his intellectual superior, when captured alive at any other period of life than that of helpless infancy, is vicious, aggressive, and intractable for weeks and months, if not during the remainder of its life. ”

“ The performance in the circus-ring is limited by time and space, and not by the mental capacity of the elephants.
When we come to consider the comparative comprehension of animals under man's tuition, we find the elephant without a rival.
On account of the fact that an elephant is about eighteen years in coming to anything like maturity, according to the Indian Government standard for working animals, it is far more economical and expeditious to catch full-grown elephants in their native jungles than it would be to breed and rear them. ”

“ The successful training of all elephants up to the required working point is so fully conceded in India that the market value of an animal depends wholly upon his age, sex, build, and the presence or absence of good tusks. The animal's education is either sufficient for the buyer, or, if not, he knows it can be made so. ”